AI Killed AEO, Not SEO: What Actually Died (and What to Do Now)

If you’ve followed our series, you know that SEO remains the essential foundation for AI visibility, and GEO requires hard data to earn AI trust. Now let’s address the real casualty of the AI revolution: AEO, or Answer Engine Optimization.

What AEO Was

AEO was the practice of optimising content to appear in featured snippets — that “position zero” box Google displayed above regular search results. The goal wasn’t necessarily to get a click, but to be the definitive direct answer that a search engine or voice assistant like Alexa delivered instantly. The reward for traditional AEO was often modest at best.

What Happened

Things got significantly worse for AEO practitioners. Google has largely replaced featured snippets with AI Overviews — AI-generated summaries that synthesise information from multiple sources. Meanwhile, Siri and Alexa are being usurped by AI chat interfaces. The specific format AEO targeted has been displaced.

What Still Works

Still, AEO as a set of techniques isn’t entirely dead. Two core principles remain valuable. First, be concise and factual. AI prefers quick, unambiguous answers — so clear FAQ sections and direct Q&A formats continue to earn value. Second, use structured data. Schema markup tells search engines and AI exactly what kind of information lives on your page, which helps AI understand your content during inference.

The Page Speed Factor

Here’s a critical bonus: page speed has taken on new importance for GEO. When an AI model needs to retrieve your content for its context window, it won’t wait around for your page to load. Think of it as an AI attention span — too slow, and the AI moves on to the next result. Consider providing an LLM.txt file as well: it acts as both an index and an FAQ, giving AI models a fast, structured entry point to your content.

A strong SEO foundation remains non-negotiable. Layer on the techniques that still work from AEO, optimise for GEO with hard data and fast pages, and you’ll be positioned for visibility across every channel — human and AI alike.

This article accompanies Part 3 of our 3-part video series. Watch the full video above, and revisit Part 1: “Did AI Kill SEO?” and Part 2: “Data Beats Persuasion.“